WikiLeaks (Is What You Make Of It)

Cablegate word-cloud: Fast Company

When the revolutionary Bolshevik government of USSR chose to publish secret diplomatic documents from the foreign policy archives of Russian Tsarist and governments of the first seven months of revolution, Leo Trotsky, in a notable Statement of November 22 1917 said: “The abolition of secret diplomacy is the primary condition for an honest, popular, truly democratic foreign policy.” At the same time, Woodrow Wilson asserted as the prime of his January 18 1918 14 Points speech: "...there will surely be no private international action or rulings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”

Unfortunately, things didn't work that way and the justified post-Great War idealism ran short of its breath in the coming years. Most of us now presume that every democratic society, being imperfect as it is, needs some balance between democracy and efficiency in foreign politics. Democratic societies show (among other things) tendencies to either act as a clam – to close in its internal world and ignore the outside – or rush into external crusades for the values or interests they deem imperative. There is always a need for stabilizing effect of diplomacy, and for the effective diplomacy that requires a level of confidentiality. There can be no open diplomacy.

The 19 century secretive, aristocratic, shadowy world of diplomacy that caused the menaces of the Great War is gone and the public and democratic control of executive government has become a standard to be guided upon. The benchmark of what we expect of our governments and foreign politics has become pretty high, especially in small states such as Serbia which depend on the outside world much more than other, more self-reliant units. Yet giving diplomacy no operational space, if that is considered by ‘transparency’ is limiting diplomatic capabilities in relative terms, compared to other states. The pushing of expectations and capabilities to opposite extremes would ultimately make foreign politics ‘inefficient but democratic’.

However, there’s a huge but. Under the diplomatic/security mantle, there is a steady flow of the abuses of efficiency principle. It’s unavoidable, but there has to be a balancing principle of culpability for it, and exposing the wrongs must be the first step. The 1971 Pentagon Papers leak is a clear case for this - the society had a right to know of its government involvement in the war. On the other hand I’d say the biggest problem with WikiLeaks Cablegate is that they are not willing to appreciate this balance. There is no absolute right to know, as they, or many before them would claim as legitimate. There is though a right to know of the abuses of diplomacy and they just didn’t make that difference clear enough.

WikiLeaks won't change the way diplomacy works in democratic societies. Mohandas Gandhi famously said that if your roof is leaking, you don’t abandon the house but fix the leaking roof. The US diplomatic information system will certainly be structurally changed, but the rules of the game will remain just the same. Yes, they will make life more uncomfortable for many active diplomats, and amuse the public for a week or two. But, the public and media are becoming already fatigued. Amazingly enough, after only two weeks, Cablegate is old news. WikiLeaks failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

Is there anything good to it? I’d say yes. Just as USSR opening of secret diplomatic archives, or Post-Cold War opening of Russian archives enabled researchers to understand the politics of the age better, the WikiLeaks is an opportunity to improve the understanding of contemporary international politics. Claiming that it isn’t so suggests scholars have better, more accurate and prompt information at their disposal, but that seems very hard to achieve. In general, Cablegate is a mixed blessing but in the end it’s what you make of it. If it can help in understanding the background of contemporary politics, it should be used, as long as one is willing to accept its authenticity but also its limits. Cablegate offers only one aspect of the events. Whats missing is the opposite views - other countries MFA's but also compatible sources from other US foreign policy makers (Drezner would argue exactly this is making the Leak bad for scholars).

In any case, local journalists are taking too little effort to browse the records themselves and are actually mostly relying on agency news and heavy filtering they carry along. Besides that, they mostly lack the understanding of the framework needed to separate important from trivial. And much of it actually is. Hearsay that has a 'secret' stamp on it does not make it any more reliable. 

So, in future posts on this blog I will regularly post abstracts of cables that are important for Serbia’s domestic and foreign politics and I will also try to give short comments on more important dispatches. The cables will be posted every seven to ten days, arranged by theme and period they cover, and the individual cables will be identified by their WikiLeaks ID. The cable will be easy to locate on various mirror sites by web searching for the ID. No links will be provided, since the domain names tend to be 'occasionally changed'.

Noble Foreign Policy

The Nobel Committee’s 2010 Peace Prize award to Liu Xiaobo caused some expected reactions from Chinese officials, but consequences for Serbian foreign policy came in a rather unanticipated way. China's government was reported to have asked the governments of other countries not to send their representatives to the Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo. On December 7 Serbian Foreign Ministry announced they will join 18 other states that will not send representatives to the ceremony on December 10. 
The first strong protests against this decision were raised among Serbian civil society representatives and some of the political parties. As a response, EU representatives also condemned this move: Jelko Kacin of European Parliament complained about Serbia being submissive towards China, and EU spokeswoman Angela Filote and Commissioner for Enlargement, Stefan Fule expressed their regret, suggesting candidate state foreign policy must be in line with EU's. While Kacin’s tone is not a novelty for Serbian public, the Commissioner’s rebuttal was certainly something Serbian government should be worried about, and it eventually responded to the criticism. Yesterday’s news reported that the Serbian Ombudsman will represent the country at the ceremony, in his own competence, but also as a representative of PM - ‘to congratulate the winner of the award’.

 Oslo City Hall, Photo: flickr / pattiebelle

EU & Kosovo: What’s New?

So where did this twist originate, did Serbian PM suddenly recognize the inadequacy of China’s human rights polices? In all probability this is not the case. The whole issue is entangled in the key Serbian foreign policy knot: its priority to become EU member and to defend its sovereignty over Kosovo. Ever since February 2008 Kosovo Unilateral Declaration of Independence, Serbian foreign policy revolved around conflict with states that had recognized the independence and its need to cooperate with EU and become its candidate/member state. One of the ways this government tried to resolve this incompatibility is by transferring the issue to the International Court of Justice, hoping for positive outcome. However, last summer’s ICJ Advisory Opinion essentially said Kosovo did not violate international law, which  was a cold shower for the government. Serbia than submitted a UN General Assembly Resolution that defended its position, in spite of EU’s determination to bring the situation out of a deadlock. What happened than was that Serbian government eventually yielded to the pressure and accepted a joint proposal of UN GA Resolution that called for the new process, a dialogue with Kosovo that will be facilitated by EU.
This ‘compromising’ resolution was a turning point, an indication that Serbia will change its policy towards Kosovo and will continue its EU approximation. What shape this policy will take is not really known, but its certain that last two or three years of overall ambiguity in relations with EU is over. That made one of the key proponents of this foreign policy, Minister Jeremic, who carried most of the burden of the surprising ICJ opinion, obsolete and he was pushed aside in the coming months, signaling that his ‘tough’ approach is not fully backed by his party chief, President Tadic, nor his government leader, PM Cvetkovic. 

Serbia & International Human Rights: Values or Interests?

When the 2010 Peace Prize winner was announced, Serbian government didn’t have much to say, contrary to 2008 award to Martti Ahtisaari. This choice was criticized, and ceremony was not attended by Serbian, or representatives of 9 other states. It is easy to understand why: earlier that year Ahtisaari was blamed by the government for his position during Serbia-Kosovo negotiations and for the solution that was acceptable only to one side. This year, Serbia did not oppose the award to Xiaobo, but the reason for it's no-show policy was just the same as two years ago and it has to do with Kosovo and not human rights. 

One of the indicators of Serbia’s foreign policy during the last two-three years is its voting record on resolutions on human rights in UN General Assembly. Before Kosovo’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, Serbia was in line with most Western states, voting in favor of resolutions that condemned status of human rights in Iran, Myanmar/Burma, North Korea or Belarus. But after the process of international recognition of Kosovo started, Serbia’s priorities changed. The international campaign of repudiating the recognitions raised the importance of many African and Asian states, and their votes in the UN GA. So, in 2008, Serbia voted against the Iran Human Rights Resolution, stating this country’s high importance in the Organization of Islamic Conference, whose members, in spite of religious ties with Kosovo’s majority population mostly did not recognize the independence, seeing it as a US-backed project. It was similar reasons behind no-votes for Myanmar or Korea Resolutions, where Serbia went against the ‘Western’ voting bloc in the UN.

 Serbian vote in UN General Assembly on Human Rights Resolutions 2006-2010

The voting record on human rights in the UN as well as consideration for China's, UN Security Council permanent member, position in the Peace Prize affair had nothing to do with human rights and values, Serbian, European or universal. Instead, it had everything to do with Serbian unresolved foreign policy priorities and its contending interests with Kosovo and EU. I'd argue that, December being already here, in few weeks, the turn in the Serbian foreign policy will show up in its voting pattern in UN. Serbia could again vote in favor of UN GA resolutions that condemn human rights situation in these states.

Bilateral Relations

Serbia’s refusal to send representative was most probably FM Jeremic’s decision, based on the ‘past policy’. Its decision to send the Ombudsman, is a sign of ‘new policy’ as can be seen in the larger ‘human rights pattern'. In the meantime, Serbian public weighed its relations with two countries especially - Norway and China. The bilateral relations with China are important for Serbia, not only because of economic interests: Chinese Ambassador in the UN is the last one that will raise hand in Security Council in favor of Kosovo’s independence. 

On the other hand, not replying to the invitation might be understood as an insult to its host, Norway. Although Norway is not an EU member and cannot directly influence Serbia’s EU approximation, Serbian-Norwegian relations have been increasingly friendly and perhaps one of the best assessed relations with any EU/NATO member states in the past decade. Also, level of investments coming from this country to Serbia is among the highest.

So the decision was not easy, but the solution might have and should have been considerably better. Serbia could have used one of many diplomatic moves that might have saved its face. It could have sent a lower-rank embassy official instead of Ambassador, or conveniently excuse its absence, instead of highly-politicized rejection. This would have made all the difference. Instead, as expected, Serbia changed its mind under pressure and in the end made worst possible choice, the one that indicates lack of tact, integrity and long-term thinking. By changing the decision, Serbia ends up with a shadow over its reputation in both camps.

 'All eyes on China' - Chinese ambassador alone in abstaining 
from vote on adopting resolution 1244 in 1999 UN Photo / Milton Grant

Domestic Politics:  Foreign Minister’s Destiny

The repercussions for domestic politics might be considerable. The ruling Democratic Party is, for months now, overwhelmed with the campaign for party elections. While the current party head, Tadic, has almost unanimous support for the December 18 elections, the real struggle is for the positions of five vice-presidents, for which FM Jeremic is one of candidates. This means that the party dynamics is heavily influencing foreign politics, yet in turn, foreign policy mistakes such as this will certainly reverberate in domestic and inter-party relations. With his position already shaken, in contrast with ambition to advance in party’s structure, pulling the rug beneath Jeremic's feet in Peace Prize affair is a strongest hit on his credibility so far. It is difficult to see how FM will proceed. Although immediate resignation would be the most optimal outcome, in light of the coming party elections, this will probably have to wait.

Serbia's policy of pursuing EU approximation and trying to keep its formal sovereignty over Kosovo was under all circumstances legitimate strategy. But, if it fails on tests such as this, it becomes increasingly obvious that it either has has no capacity or no will to handle sensitive cases. The resignation or dismissal of FM Jeremic will not solve this, only new and improved Serbian approach to foreign politics will.